Dulverton Ramblings: Newman pointed the way
Was Pope Benedict XVI inspired by Cardinal John Henry Newman, whom it is hoped he will beatify in England next year, when he suddenly threw open the gates of Rome to disaffected Anglicans on Tuesday morning?
Was Pope Benedict XVI inspired by Cardinal John Henry Newman, whom it is hoped he will beatify in England next year, when he suddenly threw open the gates of Rome to disaffected Anglicans on Tuesday morning?
The official website for Newman’s Cause hinted as much when it greeted the announcement with a reminder of Newman’s support for a proposal to establish an Anglican Uniate Church for converts, similar to that provided for Byzantine-rite Catholics. The plan was conceived by Ambrose Phillips de Lisle and Newman rightly guessed that it would be unworkable. But if it could be made to work, he said, he was all in favour. As he wrote to de Lisle in 1876:
“Nothing will rejoice me more than to find that the Holy See considers it safe and promising to sanction some such plan as the Pamphlet suggests. I give my best prayers, such as they are, that some means of drawing to us so many good people, who are now shivering at our gates, may be discovered.”
And now it has been, thanks to Pope Benedict, who I hope will name his great scheme after Newman. I am sure the Pope is familiar with the reference to “shivering at the gates”, which William Oddie quotes in his book The Roman Option, an account of the English bishops’ failure to meet Anglican pastoral needs in the early 1990s.
The then Cardinal Ratzinger is believed to have read the book, which reads as a dreadful reproach to a hierarchy which determinedly set up obstacles to Anglican corporate reunion. The bishops had no idea that those obstacles would be swept away with such force this week – and for a good reason: the Holy Father did not consult them.
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